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[onthepoint]

UNPLUGGED

OOC

Name: Lauren
Age: 29
Contact details: PM or blauren
Characters already in Systemwide: Crowley

BASIC PROFILE

Name: Arthur
Age: Early 30s
Canon: Inception
Appearance: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur
Extraction point: post-film

OVERVIEW

Personality: The first impression Arthur carefully manicures for others is that of a very serious professional. He dresses well and offers a courteous and polite demeanor. He's helpful and even friendly to people who may be receptive, but there's a distance he keeps, revealing very little of himself to others. It's not that he doesn't have a sense of humor, but that he prefers not to present it much of the time and there are definitely times when he takes himself too seriously. Sometimes, this translates to him pushing at others for not fitting the mold that he sees as professional and he can come off as somewhat egotistical or condescending as a result of this. He's a perfectionist and he pushes that need onto the input of others, as well. He would rather plan things out as much as possible than operate on the fly, though he is clever enough to roll with what is thrown at him once he's in the field and he finds clever solutions to unpredictable problems. His job is one that he genuinely enjoys, finding a satisfaction in solving the puzzles he's tasked with and fitting the information he gathers into a whole picture.

He's a very detail-oriented person. His job is largely focused on gathering information for the purposes of planning and as such, he has the skills required to learn about people's personal lives. In regard to his job, he's seen as being very good by his peers, though he's not without mistakes. He's very comfortable playing the role of back-up, more likely to provide information to the liar than to step up and play a role himself, though he's not incapable of the task and plays his own roles when the situation calls for it. While he may not possess the acting skills that Eames and Cobb have, he can lie or play a part with more ease than your average person.

When it comes to interpersonal relationships, he keeps things more professional than personal with coworkers. He operates well in a team-setting as long as he is happy with his team and everyone is able to do their own job. He flirts with Ariadne, but tells her very little about himself. He also follows and supports Cobb, having known his dead wife, but their interactions remain clearly professional much of the time, even though they've worked together a fair amount. Arthur has a history with Eames and he's perhaps the person Arthur is most friendly towards after Ariadne, but even that comes with its share of pointed barbs and no personal revelations.

His talents and mindset lend themselves more towards the logical/analytic side of things than the creative, but he's not without his interest in them. If he was, he wouldn't have fallen into such a profession. In Saito's dream at the beginning of the film, Mal notes that the building they're in looks like Arthur's taste, showing that he isn't without his interest in the creative and aesthetic. In line with his interest in the aesthetic, he does care about his appearance and he keeps his presentation neat, even in more casual settings. He doesn't simply wear a suit because it's expected, but strives to wear clothes with a good fit that look clean and expensive.

Despite Eames' assessment of him in the film, Arthur isn't without imagination. He has a love of paradoxes, such as the Penrose staircase, in addition to his appreciation for the aesthetic and when he's left with the problem of dropping his teammates without gravity, he comes up with the solution of putting them in an elevator and using the force of an explosion to simulate a drop. While he may not be the architect or the liar, he is the creative problem-solver and in order to do his job well, he does have to know enough about everyone else's jobs to know what they're capable of.

Arthur is cautious by nature, at least as cautious as a criminal can be. He expresses concern about taking on the Fischer job and even more concern for Cobb visiting Eames when he's in an area where they know people are angry at the both of them.


Matrix: Wiki history

The world Inception takes place in is very similar to current-day Earth. It paints a very familiar picture and is meant to either be present-day or the very near future, as the technology level shown, outside of the dreamshare technology, is at today's level.

The one major difference in this world is that at some point, the military created the technology to allow people to share dreams and enter each other's subconscious. This was developed as a training program, though the criminals in the film show us that there is an underground of people who have started to use the technology to steal secrets. In the film, they are given the task of actually influencing someone's decisions, though none of them know whether or not it's ever been done before.

Arthur works in this criminal underground. It is unknown what his background is, though his comfort with the technology and knowledge that it came from the military can be used to infer that he was involved in the military application of the technology at some point. His comfort with firearms, hand-to-hand combat and explosives doesn't contradict that idea, either.

When using the dreamsharing technology, many of the characters are shown to have totems--an item that only they know the weight or movement of--so that they can tell whether or not they're in someone else's dream. This is necessary because in a dream, characters don't remember how they arrived in that new place. Keeping track of reality is a very real problem for them. Arthur's totem is a red loaded die.

The importance of keeping track of reality is there because there are two ways to leave the dream; either the clock runs out on the machine or you die. Losing track of reality can lead to attempting to leave a dream when you are in fact in reality, which happened to someone they knew.

Real World: Arthur has been out of the Matrix for four months. Having come to rely on his totem to tell dreams from reality, he began to struggle without it, often reaching for it and slowly beginning to question if the reality he was brought out into wasn't a dream. While in rehab, this behavior was noticed and he's been kept under psychiatric watch for his own safety after he finally admitted to his struggle.

He's spent the last month pretending that he finally believes this to be reality so that he would be released. Though he's still somewhat unsure if it is or not, he does think that it could be. He's making an effort to be cautiously optimistic, while still being incredibly paranoid and generally uncomfortable about the entire situation.

ABILITIES AND SKILLS

Anomalies: None beyond an ability to manipulate dreams when dreamsharing.

Skillset: Arthur has shown skills in firearms, hand-to-hand combat and explosives. He also possesses the skills necessary for gathering information on people, likely on par with a top notch private investigator, such as computer research, familiarity with public records and a comfort with gathering information in a less-than-legal way.

Upload Capabilities:

Anomalous Skills: 0
Martial Arts: 2
Projectile Weaponry: 3
Technical Skills: 4
Wild Card: 1

SAMPLES

Sample 1
Arthur's no stranger to training in a false reality. In fact, that's where a good portion of his training has taken place. There's something different about this place, though. Dreamsharing hadn't felt natural at first, but he'd been doing it for years. He feels like he's fallen right back to the start of that, though.

Without even practicing, he feels like he has all of this muscle memory at his disposal. He's never flown a plane before, but he knows exactly what to do here, using the controls to bring up the landing gear as he starts to gain altitude. He's lost so much control in his life lately, but now he's controlling something he's never even tried in dreams.

It's uncanny and even though he's had doubts about what reality is, there's a strange sense of comfort in knowing without a doubt that this isn't reality. As the plane soars into the clouds, he feels a calm settle over him.


Sample 2
Signing up for the mission had felt like a no-brainer to Arthur. There were no challenges for him if he just sat around in Zion--at least no challenges that were healthy for him--but here he could use his skills and keep his mind busy. He's been on a few missions, all routine, and this one was only supposed to be a little more challenging, but they'd made a mistake and now some machine is claw its way through the hull.

When it finally breaches the bridge, Arthur is on autopilot. It's taken work to get his skills back to where they should be, but he's nothing if not a hard worker and there's a gun in his hand before he even has to think about it. With one good shot, he manages to slow the thing down and make it pause.

"We've got to turn around! There can't be just one of them."

The pilot nods and he feels the floor move beneath him. Keeping his arm steady, he manages another debilitating shot, but it's still moving. He keeps his gun pointed at it, stepping closer with quick steps.

With a well-aimed foot, he manages to dislodge it through the hole it had be tearing. From there, it's all about looking for a temporary patch for the hole. Arthur hates when plans fall apart, but he's always ready. It's no different from before, really, except now the monster doesn't wear an old friend's face.